


dandelion rings

by intrikate88



Series: watercolor girls in a tintype town [1]
Category: Justified
Genre: F/F, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Pre-Series, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrikate88/pseuds/intrikate88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not easy, growing up in Harlan; it's even harder for girls who weren't the sons their fathers wanted. Just because Raylene Givens and Brianne Crowder had the ill luck to be born girls doesn't mean they can't get in as much trouble as any boys, or more- especially once it becomes clear they've got no interest in boys at all. </p>
<p>(Vignettes about the female versions of Raylan and Boyd, set many years before the show begins.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. some of that summertime

**Author's Note:**

> Winona points out in the very first episode that Raylan is the angriest man she's ever met. He's angry at the world, at his father, at himself, at the way he tries to escape his upbringing but never can. But he doesn't have the hardest life; a few episodes later, Rachel calls him on the fact that he has room to be angry, because he's a white man, for whom society allows a certain degree of leniency. 
> 
> The rage of the privileged is not dull, but it does lead me to wonder, how would that rage have shaped Raylan had he been born a girl? If he was a girl who was in love with another girl, and not yet clever enough to hide it from judgmental eyes? What does the hope-drained town buried in the mountains hold for two girls who hate their bitter fathers and the coal companies polluting their homes and the outlines of the boys whose exploits they outdo because they can't change the accident of their births?
> 
> Now think about it: two teenage girls, all sharp teeth and anger and too smart to stay in a shithole like Harlan, so they promise each other to get out together. But they don’t.

_In a field of lightening bugs_   
_That put the country stars to shame_   
_We’re gonna get higher than the corn tonight_   
_‘Cause boys like her_   
_Bring me some some some of that summertime_

_With watermelon chins and sunscreen hands_   
_Mosquito bites and farmer tans_   
_She slipped a dandelion ring on my left hand_   
_‘Cause she knew I was the one_

_-"Girls Like Me (Summertime)", Coyote Grace_

***

Summertime meant watermelons and scratching yourself bloody filling buckets from the blackberry brambles; it meant scratched-open mosquito bites and laying sprawled in front of the fan when it got too hot. It meant laying out to tan on the roof of the Crowder's front porch, with a pellet gun near to hand for any brothers or other boys who got the idea in their head to hassle Brianne and Raylene for wearing nothing but bikinis.

"That from your daddy?" asked Brianne, when Raylene got her shirt off. The marks, sloppily layered across her back and shoulders, were shallow, purpling bruises. Not cuts, not the ugly greenish-yellow bruises that last for a week or two.

He hadn’t really been sober enough to aim.

"Arlo got pissed when he couldn’t find his stash, thought I’d took it. I mean, I did, but he didn’t even remember where he’d left it, so how would he know." She leaned back against the roof. "Ain’t nothing we ain’t both used to. Did you bring the beer up?"

"Course I did. Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, Raylene."

"Oh, stop quoting Martin Luther and hand me one before I knock you off this roof."

"Arlo didn’t leave you too sore to fight me?"

"Ol’ fucker can’t do anything I can’t handle." Raylene popped her beer can open. She added, so casually that Brianne thought anyone who knew Raylene less than she did wouldn’t take her seriously, "I’m gonna shoot the bastard, one of these days."

"Oh yeah?" Brianne popped open her own can, wishing it were colder, but something was wrong with the fridge again. "How do you figure you’re gonna get away with that?"

"I’ll figure out a way." Raylene closed her eyes, let the sun soak into her skin. "I’m looking forward to it."

 


	2. leave harlan, alive

"We’re gonna go where not a damn person knows our faces," said Raylene, as they sat on the roof of Brianne’s pickup in the Dairy Queen parking lot, eating ice cream. Brianne refused to drive while eating, since she was only fourteen and the pickup was Bo’s and the police wouldn’t pull them over and haul them home if they weren’t doing anything obviously unsafe in public. "Like, Lexington. One day."

"I may swoon from imagining the massive size of your dreams, Raylene," deadpanned Brianne. "All the way to Lexington, my goodness me."

"Fine, then. Memphis. Asheville. I’ve heard Asheville’s good. That’s the one with the castle, right?"

"The Biltmore Estate. It was the field trip we went on when you had mono and Arlo near ruptured your spleen venting his."

"Where do you want to go, then, Brianne?"

Brianne sucked a drip of melted ice cream off the back of her hand. “The moon.”

Raylene looked up at the sliver of moon, the scatter of stars across the night sky, half blocked by the light from the Dairy Queen sign. “Yeah, no one would know us there.”

 

 


	3. coal at the bottom of your grave

_Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning_   
_And the sun goes down about three in the day_   
_And you’ll fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you’re drinking_   
_And you spend your life digging coal from the bottom of your grave_   
  
_You’ll never leave Harlan alive_

-"You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive", Darrell Scott

***

"They don’t let high school dropouts get to be astronauts," Raylene said carefully, not wincing as Brianne threw a string of firecrackers and they exploded before they hit the ground. 

"Yeah, well, Raylene, fact of the world is, they don’t let people who don’t go to fancy colleges and don’t have shiny spotless records be astronauts. Gotta have money for things like that. I don’t need a diploma if I took the GED anyway."

"Brianne." Raylene felt— she wasn’t sure what. It pressed up against her throat like anger, like sadness, like looking back and seeing what you’ve lost before you lose it. "We’re gonna get out of here. We promised. We’re gonna get the fuck out of Harlan."

"How? How, Raylene? Cause I certainly do not see a ready exit route. Not ‘less you won the lottery and failed to tell me."

"There’s scholarships and shit, right? You and me are smarter than everyone in this town, there has to be something for us."

"There’s something for me," Brianne said, standing up and brushing the dirt off her ass. She pocketed her lighter. "A job opened up for a demolitions expert at the mine. I knew the guy who used to do it, he was shit. I can do this, Raylene."

"The— you’d go work at the mines?" Raylene didn’t move. "You’re a woman."

"There’s women who work in the mines. Two percent of the workforce. I looked it up. Most of ‘em are single mothers too, I don’t even have to share the money with kids or anything."

"Yeah, but— the mine."

"What, you think I care about danger now, after all we’ve been through?"

"Bo will never let you."

"I don’t give a good goddamn what Bo will let me do."

"I won’t let you."

"Fuck you, Raylene."

Raylene wondered how Brianne could look so forbidding and so vulnerable, all at once. How the scowl on her face was as good as a kick in the balls for most of the boys in town but behind it she was… waiting. Waiting for something to say she was on the right track. Raylene stepped forward, crushing her lips against Brianne’s, pushing her up against the tree. It wasn’t a soft kiss, not tender, not yielding; Raylene pushed, her teeth behind her lips, nothing romantic at all and only one message: I’m not letting you go, because we said we’d do this together, because you made me a dandelion ring and kissed me when we were in first grade, because you know the taste of my mama’s cooking, because you read John Stuart Mill and I read Michael Crichton, because if anyone is going to the stars it should be you.

"Graduation’s in six weeks," said Raylene, stepping back at last. "Think there’s another job at the mine?"

"You gonna work with me?"

"You think I’m gonna let you work without me? Someone’s gotta keep you from blowing your damn head off."

And for once, Brianne didn’t have fifty words to say, but she just reached out and laced her fingers through Raylene’s instead.

 


	4. field of lightning bugs that put the country stars to shame

Girls doing it didn't count, said Brianne's brother Bowman, but Bowman was always so full of shit that they didn't listen to him. Other people said so too, but not much. When people talked about fucking, it wasn't about girls. What Raylene's mama Frances had told her about what boys want didn't seem to have anything to do with anything Raylene wanted, but she listened anyway, and carried a switchblade since she started wearing a bra.

 

"Does it matter one way or another if it counts or not?" reasoned Brianne, as they laid on the air mattress in the flatbed of the pickup. The summer night roared with katydids and all the other bugs, and the heat haze in the air and all the lightning bugs made the stars a little bit fainter than usual in the sky. The window units in their houses hadn't been enough to cool down, and with Bo on a bender it was best to make sure his truck was out of reach. A clearing halfway out of the valley was a good enough place as any to spend the night. 

 

"Well, I saw some of Arlo's porn with two girls and they looked pretty bored."

 

"Yeah, but they're actresses. They probably don't even like girls."

 

There was a pause there, with a brief and thunderingly silent interruption in the cicada calls before they started up again. The question lingered on the air: do we? They'd kissed, yeah, but those were mostly chaste kisses, comfortable kisses. They held each other's hand to pull them someplace but otherwise-- well, neither was entirely keen on being all close and such. Do we? Does it count, or do we just go out with the third-year-sophmores who smoke in the school parking lot? 

 

"I imagine it counts if we decide it does," said Brianne slowly. "And if we don't want it to count later, then it won't."

 

"Well, you're not gonna get all gross and girly on me if we fuck, right?"

 

"When, Raylene, have you known me to be 'gross and girly' about a single damn thing in your life? You think I'd act different afterward if it was a guy here with me right now?"

 

"I think you'd act different if it wasn't your best friend with you here right now," said Raylene quietly. 

 

Brianne rolled over on her side. "Damn right," she said. "Because if it weren't you, I'd fuck the guy's brother a few days later so that neither of 'em thought he had any right to me. Here's as gross and girly as you're ever gonna get from me: you, I'll still talk to afterward. Because we're already two sides of the same coin, you're the only person in this goddamn town I'd be out here spending nights with in the summer year after year, and I already let you know what I'm thinking. You already got what I won't let any guy, anyone else, have of me. So if you'll stop being a dumbass because I know you know all this, then I might take off my shirt and let you touch my boobs, Raylene."

 

"God, Brianne, you talk a lot," Raylene answered, complaining but not really, "I'mma be sixty before I lose my virginity."

 

Brianne's face stretched into her almost-too-wide grin. "No, you won't."


End file.
